English (hot) Corner: ♪ Take Me Out to the Bàngqiú Bĭsài ♪

English Corner is supposed to be a time when a couple of classes’ worth of students, say 40 or 50, meet with me once a week to practice their English, discuss anything under the sun in a less formal atmosphere and ask me anything they want.

In reality, as experience has shown, students here rarely volunteer anything. They wait to be lectured. Consequently, English Corner can be awkward, if not a complete waste of time. In a rather blunt article on the subject, a Guangzhou teacher named Martin Wolff suggested that, while most foreign teachers loathe English Corner, the activity allows Chinese administrators and teachers “to completely abdicate any responsibility for creating or maintaining a true English Speaking Environment on their campus.” (As he noted, it’s in my contract.)

Anyway, I decided it would be a good opportunity to introduce baseball (bàngqiú) or, more accurately, a sort of baseball/stickball hybrid game (with a broomstick and tennis ball) to Jianghai Polytechnic College. First, I had the students chant, “Let’s play ball!” Then, since it was such a beautiful day, I taught them to chant, “Let’s play two!”

That was followed by a brief lesson of how baseball terms and idioms can be used in a broader sense, such as matters related to sex. From there, I plunged, so to speak, into explaining the basics of strikes, outs, batting and defense, then we took it outside.

Considering that the first hitter who made contact with the ball ran past first base into the gym, baserunners stopped to catch the ball or else ignored the bases entirely, one batter hit the ball toward third base and followed it there, and — my favorite — the first baseman would catch the ball, immediately toss it to the second baseman, who’d toss it to the shortstop, who’d fire it to third in an endless hot potato dance, considering all that, I thought it all went rather well.

Until one of those suckers struck me out.

The China Star story on teaching English

Or, somehow my newspaper career refuses to die. If you live in or near Raleigh, N.C., you can see the spindly signs of life in The China Star, a small, bilingual paper published in the Triangle. It can usually be found with other such publications at the entrance to a public library.

Appropriately, I wrote about my reasons for coming to China, the market for English teachers and a Chinese viewpoint on hiring native English speakers to teach, as provided by Chen Changshun, interim director of the foreign languages department at Jianghai Polytechnic College, who recruited me to come to Yangzhou.

Here are some highlights, plus a little extra from Mr. Chen that was not submitted for the story:

• A guide for foreign teachers in China, published by the web site Middle Kingdom Life, reports that an estimated 325 million Chinese, or about one-fourth of the population, is studying English at any given time, terming the language effort a “national obsession.”
• Though current figures are uncertain, the China Daily newspaper reported in 2006 that more than 150,000 foreign experts, most of them from the United States, England, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, were employed in China, and People’s Daily Online reported that about 100,000 foreign teachers per year were being recruited.
• As reported previously, my deal is fairly typical: 4,500 yuan ($676 U.S.) per month — low enough so that no Chinese taxes are deducted; a small, furnished, one-bedroom apartment; all utilities except telephone paid; basic medical coverage; $1,200 reimbursement for round-trip air fare; and 1,100 yuan in traveling money at the end of each semester. (Although the salary seems low, it is actually quite good — more than enough to live on comfortably. The biggest expense here, by far, is housing, which is provided for me.)

Mr. Chen, 62, a longtime vice-president of the foreign languages college at nearby Yangzhou University, discussed China’s drive to learn English and the experience of foreign teachers.

T.G.I. Mid-Autumn Festival

One more class today, then a four-day break to celebrate the Fifteenth of the Eighth Moon, and not a moment too soon. To borrow a line from Rodney, now I know why tigers eat their young. So, thank you ancient Xia and Shang dynasties — China Daily has a very good explanation of the Mid-Autumn Festival — and bring on the pomegranates, pomelos, cooked taro, water caltrope and, especially, moon cakes. Those are habit-forming.

In looking back on my experience thus far as an English teacher at Jianghai Polytechnic College, I hold these truths to be self-evident:

1. Don’t believe that no teaching experience is needed, as many ESL job ads claim. Classroom experience makes a big difference (translation: makes life a lot easier). At least you should do some sort of TEFL or TESOL coursework before coming to China, especially if you’re planning to teach older students. Personally, I don’t think it’s a substitute for real experience, but it can’t hurt, and will add to your qualifications if and when your school helps you apply for the “foreign expert license” that will enable you to obtain a work visa to stay in China for, say, a year.

2. “Don’t have to speak Chinese” to get a job. True. Some comfort level with the language, though, might be even more important than point No. 1. I worked with a Chinese tutor for several weeks before traveling from Raleigh, N.C., to Yangzhou in Jiangsu Province. Wasn’t enough.

It strikes me as absurd that someone with no teaching experience and no more than a few words of Mandarin in his head can teach English to 30-35 Chinese college students at a time. I’m putting myself to sleep.

3. Speak slowly, future ESL teachers. Then slow it down another 50 percent. I’m having a lot of trouble doing that. Chinese students who are supposed to have several years of English training can barely understand a word I’m saying. Many can speak no more than a few words.

I’ve expressed my frustrations over the difficulty connecting with students to my superiors in the foreign languages department, and they have sympathetically reminded me more than once that Jianghai students scored lower on their college entrance exams than any other students in China. Oh, that’s heartening. No wonder I was qualified for this job.

My, uh, physical

This isn’t for the squeamish. If you’re highly yuck-susceptible, stop reading.

I’m in China on an F visa, good for three months. To teach here for a full academic year, I need a Z visa. A work visa, in other words. For that, I need to be classified as a foreign expert (stop laughing), which requires a completed physical examination record for foreigner. Jianghai College arranged for me to be accompanied this morning to a clinic in downtown Yangzhou for the physical, for which I had to pay 300 yuan. No surprise there — Mr. Chen had made it clear when he hired me that I would have to pay that fee.

So, we went in, and I filled out the top part of the form with personal information. Checked “no” on all the major diseases, maybe fudged a little on the answer to “mental confusion.”

I was then seen by a team of health professionals, each performing a different task. First, someone put a stethoscope to my chest for a few moments. In another room, my height and weight were recorded, and my blood pressure taken. Easy so far.

Next, the X-ray room, where a chain smoker in a lab coat, hunched over his paper next to a butt-filled ash tray and a mug of tea, got up and ushered me to a large machine. I stepped up, and he commenced maneuvering both the device and my body. He had me put both arms behind me, with palms against my lower back, kind of a rooster position. I then had to press myself against the surface, including my elbows somehow and my face smushed against it, too. I’m guessing he was going for the full frontal look. Awkward, but still OK.

Across the hall, another official had me lie on an examining table, wiped some gooey stuff on my abdomen and gave me what I assume was an ultrasound exam. Apparently, I am not pregnant, but if I were, and the baby were male, he would be incredibly well-endowed. That’s how I’m choosing to interpret the results, anyway.

In yet another room, I was again told to lie down; more gooey stuff was applied to my belly; and some sort of contraption with what looked like suction cups and electrodes was attached to me, like something out of a David Cronenberg film. I then heard what sounded suspiciously like an electronic hum, increasing in volume. I braced myself for the shock, but in moments it was over. A small device next to the table spat out a reading. EKG, I hope?

Finally, it was off to the sample collection room. I was handed what looked like a miniature, plastic banana split boat. For the urine sample. Somehow, I was to divert three or four drops from a monstrous stream into this, er, container without a top.

I was steered toward the bathroom, and entered. The stench hit me first. Oh, man, let me make this quick. One of the stalls was available. There was no toilet in the sense that we think of it. More like a porcelain hole over which one must squat, if necessary. No toilet paper, either. Now I know why I’ve been carrying my own tissues everywhere.

China, in so many respects, is a breathtakingly gorgeous country. This was not one of them.

Eager to complete my mission quickly, I aimed well, washed and blow-dried my hands and carried that little sucker back to the collection room as if competing in an egg-on-a-spoon race. The health professional there dropped a strip into the container. Again, NOT pregnant. A blood sample was then taken — no horror story there; she opened a small package with a sterile needle — and that was it.

I wanna go home now.

Day 2: I officially suck

Truthfully, I do love the whole teaching-in-China thing, except for the teaching part.

Today was national Teachers’ Day, which meant I got a lovely card before my junior students in ET (English and Trade) 081 began openly despising me, mimicking my nasally, Western New York-bred accent, pulling out their cell phones and, in the case of one late-arriving student, simply laying his head on his desk and falling asleep. He’s now a Rogervdh footnote — the first student I’ve kicked out of class.

Let the record show, in the interest of settling a few friendly wagers out there, that the meltdown came approximately 170 minutes into my Jianghai College career. Less than three hours. It was shortly after 9:00 a.m. when I grabbed a piece of chalk and wrote in large letters on the blackboard: “BULLSHIT.” I’m not even sure what I was thinking, other than expressing my frustration at getting absolutely nowhere with them.

Oh, but they loved that. Got a full response from the class of 45, loudly chanted, then a few volunteered the Chinese translation: 废话, fèihuà (meaning literally “superfluous words”), or 胡说, húshuo (“talk nonsense” — you can see little lines of B.S. emanating from the second character). If you separate the two characters, it comes out: “Mustache (or beard) said.” Hey, I’m not saying anyone with a mustache or beard is full of it. Evidently, the Chinese are.

Do you want to learn English? (Wrote that on the board.) Why do you want to learn English? (Wrote that on the board.) Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Where is God? And why can’t I stop sweating?

Blank stares.

Amid the pregnant pauses, the English eloquence of many students continues to astound me. I broke the class into four groups — by the way, what ever happened to the 25-30 class sizes I was promised? — and assigned each group to come up with at least five sentences or questions on a particular theme. For Group A, it was five questions about America. The second group was told to list at least five things I should know about China or the Chinese people. The third had five places I should visit while in China. The fourth group was asked to describe five favorite foods or dishes.

Among the things I should know about China: “West Lake in Hangzhou is beautiful, and a moving love story about BaiNiangzi and XuXian happened there.” One student, Lily, then gave me a moving and detailed description of the ancient Chinese tale, sort of a Romeo-and-Juliet doomed romance between a man and, well, a snake. Madame White Snake transforms into a woman to fall in love with a mortal man. Long story short: It didn’t work out. It’s difficult even today for a man and a snake, though many women would describe that as a snake-snake relationship.

Lily patiently, and in very good English, answered my questions and discussed the story’s many themes, though they seem to boil down to: Don’t judge a book by its cover.

Moral of today’s classroom story: I had better learn to relax (and teach), or this is going to be a very long year.

P.S. — Forgot to erase “BULLSHIT” before the next teacher arrived. Was that a bad thing?

I’m all in

Booked my flight to Shanghai on American Airlines: $1,258 for the economy, round-trip ticket. I’ll leave Raleigh-Durham for Chicago at 6:40 a.m. Aug. 30, change planes and arrive 2:05 p.m. the next day at Shanghai’s Pudong Airport, where a fellow Jianghai Polytechnic College teacher will meet me. We’ll take a high-speed train from there to Zhengjiang, then be driven to the school in Yangzhou.

Flying time amounts to about 19½ hours, and it will probably take another five or six hours to get to the college. The academic term will begin Sept. 1, but I am told that I will not teach my first class (sophomores) until Sept. 7 and my freshman class until Sept. 23. That gives me some time to adjust.

At the end of the school year, assuming I make it, I’ll be reimbursed $1,200 U.S. for the flight. I probably should have spent less but could have paid much more. I ended up making the reservation by phone ($20 extra) after a fairly extensive online search — to be sure that I would be allowed change the return flight for a fee ($250). I also paid extra to allow the return flight to be made up to 12 months after the first flight. So, the return reservation has me leaving China in October — within the limits of my three-month (F) visa. If I get my work (Z) visa, I can stay longer and change the reservation.

My brother, among others, urged me to fly business class because it’s such a long trip. A look at the prices dissuaded me. The cheapest ran more than $3,400. American offers what it calls “business special” fares, but the ones I found for Shanghai involved overnight stays in the connecting U.S. cities.

Footprints Recruiting, which recruits native English speakers to teach overseas, offers to hook up its ESL teachers with its own travel agency to eliminate possible missteps. That kind of stress elimination service adds to the argument in favor of going through a recruiting service to land an overseas teaching job.

Even if you don’t work with an agency, Footprints offers good advice for teachers making their own travel plans.

For my own online search, I used Kayak, which aggregates results from other travel sites like Travelocity, Priceline and Expedia. IgoUgo is similar. For travel within China, you might want to try eLong or 9588.com for discounted air fares.

A neat collection of forums for expatriates and travelers: Raoul’s China Saloon, which includes a more extended list of travel sites.

The deal

There are two parts: the standard contract for foreign workers and the all-important “appendix” that specifies what I’ll be doing, for how much and for how long. The standard contract, as provided by the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs for China, outlines the basic obligations for Party A (the school) and Party B (me).

For example, “Party A shall provide Party B with necessary working and living conditions.” And “Party B shall observe relevant laws and regulations of the People’s Republic of China and shall not interfere in China’s internal affairs.”

The contract appendix says I get:

• 4,500 yuan per month (at the current exchange rate, that comes to the, uh, modest sum of $662.40 per month);
• 1,100 yuan “tour subsidy” — traveling money — after each of the two academic terms;
• $1,200 U.S. reimbursement for getting to China and back, to be paid at the end of the year (enough to cover the cheapest flights, from what I can see);
• a furnished flat with a bedroom, bathroom, sitting room and kitchen, phone, Internet connection, AC, TV, washing machine, microwave, fridge and “induction cooker;”
• utilities, TV and Internet;
• medical insurance;
• holidays off — Christmas (two days), New Year’s Day, Spring Festival (three days), Ching Ming Festival (one), Labor Day, Dragon Boat Festival (one), Mid-Autumn Festival (one), National Day (three).

My tasks:

• Teach 16 classes per week, each class lasting 45 minutes, with 25-30 students per class (five-day work week includes teacher work day Saturday, and I get Sunday and Monday off);
• Teach advanced English writing course for Chinese teachers of English (I can already hear the snickering from some reporters);
• Help organize “off-class” activities such as English Corner and English Speech Contest.

If I leave work without permission or am “slack in work on purpose,” I can be fined two days’ pay for each day missed. The government also can fine me ($800 to $3,000 U.S.) for breach of contract.

It’s safe to say I won’t be coming back with a boatload of yuan, but the money isn’t bad for someone with no teaching experience or TEFL certificate. And the cost of living in China is still low in many respects — a buck or two U.S. gets you a meal in the fried rice capital of the world. I see this as a break-even deal, which suits me fine in exchange for the experience of living in China. In theory.

More to come.